


Echoes

by azri



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, F/M, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-16
Updated: 2015-05-16
Packaged: 2018-03-30 19:41:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3949210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azri/pseuds/azri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He could not deny that meeting Marian had awakened something inside of him, starting with the memory of her name before blooming into a series of small, phantom memories that came and went as surely as the pain on the small of his back. Soon, he found that he…remembers many things. Mostly, it was mere flashes and brushes of feelings. Snippets of conversations, shadows of face remembered and strange, complicated weaves of healing magic that he didn’t remember ever learning. The scent of Lilacs that he knew was hers even before she met her.</p><p>Then one night, after all of them had too much to drink and Varrek had spun one too many tales of the Circle Uprising, he remembers dying.</p><p>A reincarnation AU where Anders and Hawke meets again, from a very, very old Kink meme prompt on LJ.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Echoes

The first thing he noticed was how blue her eyes were.

His own magic has always been blue, like the wisps of light emanating ever so slightly from his fingers as he tried, and ultimately failed to stop the little boy in front of him from squirming. At this rate, he might as well put the lad under a sleep spell first before he can actually get a good hold of his bleeding arm. 

There was a faint rustling of cloth, and suddenly she was there, eyes making contact briefly with him behind the boy’s scrunched-up face. Kind, enquiring, and bluer than anything.

The second thing he notices was that she also has magic.

A multitude of gentle sparks suddenly bursts into existence on the air around them, tiny wisps of colored light dancing and chasing each other in a show meant to engage. He couldn’t really fault the boy for gawking, as he was too, in a smaller way. Over the boy’s head, she made a quick gesture on the boy’s direction, turning his attention back to the task at hand.

The last of the sparks flickers away with a flourish just as he finishes healing the boy’s arm, and the boy lopes off with a quick thanks and a big grin, leaving the two of them still crouching on the ground. Which was supposed to be awkward, but is somewhat not, not with her just inches away – a faint waft of lilacs gently prodding at something inside his head. 

“Thank you” He shifts the strap of his bulging pack on his shoulders as he starts to rise, extending his other hand to her. She blinks, as if jolted out of a similar reverie herself.

“Least I can do. I’m rubbish at healing” She grins sheepishly, delicate fingers brushing away dark hair from pale cheeks. Her free hand hesitates a moment before taking his, and when it does, she looks up to her with those blue, blue eyes. 

And just like that, his heart was suddenly and irrevocably lost.

The feeling was strange and alien, so he covers it with an expression he was familiar with - A waggle of his eyebrows and the slightest tilt of the corner of his mouth that usually send hearts fluttering and broken in equal measures.

“And I am totally hopeless at conjuring anything. Does that make us a good team, then?” 

She blushes prettily, pink staining her pale cheeks even as she half stumblingly, asked. Is he new in town? Is he a certified healer? Why is there so many feathers in his robe? (At this last question her blush returns and she mumbles something like Maker, Meri’s ramblings have finally gotten to me!) 

He regains himself enough to answer at least half of her questions, and ask her name. Since he’d be here for a long time anyway, and another chance encounter with her would not be a bad thing. Indeed, if he could have his way, he would see to it that their next encounters would not be by chance alone. 

“It’s Marian” At that she hesitates again “You know, like the Champion of Kirkwall” She adds the last bit quickly, as if used to stating it before other people could. 

“Then I shall be seeing you around, Marian” he gives her a sweeping bow, and let her walk away with a polite nod of her dark head.

Afterwards, he frowns a bit - at himself, mostly. Listlessly following the crudely drawn map of Lothering given to him by Justin. Even through the din of noises around him, the girl’s voice from earlier seemed to play itself back, again and again in his head. 

_“It’s Marian”_

Something awakens, inside of him.

 

******************************

 

Then he begins to feel it. There’s a small, throbbing pain on his back every time she is near. 

And they seem to be around each other most of the time, now. Her father turns out to be the healer he was to be apprenticed with, Selena’s uncle twice-removed (or something of that sort), and apparently, the best damn Healer in Ferelden – if anything that came out of that blasted Warden is to be believed. But he digresses, the woman had, after all saved his arse multiple times during his run as the Grey Warden’s trainee Healer.

His days are now spent in the large clinic on the back of Lothering’s Chantry, attending to patients that came from around town and far and wide alike. He came in on the right season too, as Ferelden’s summer usually brought forth a hodgepodge of ailments and a large surge of patients to the Clinic’s doors. More than once, the Healer had expressed his relief for his impeccable timing. Marian’s older sister, who usually helps with the healing, has just moved to an apprenticeship in the Calenhad College of Enchanters, and his presence here is just the thing to help him tackle the rush of summer patients. 

Despite her rather renowned lack of healing skills, Marian still helps around the clinic – bringing lunches, taking care of minor ailments that salves and potions can remedy, cataloguing supplies, and sometimes providing impromptu light shows to the delight of their younger patients. Maker, but the girl really does have a knack for that. Sometimes, the whole clinic would seem to pause everything it was doing as wisps of colored light twirled, and chased each other through the wooden rafters above them, leaving everyone with a slightly wider smile and a considerably cheerier disposition for the day.

But forget the light shows, her smile alone was enough to keep him smiling for a whole day. And those smiles were hardly a rare occurrence, as her slight, dark haired figure is becoming something of a temporary fixture in the Clinic. He tells himself firmly that he’s not the sole reason she’s there (Selena had beaten out a good portion of that kind of smugness from him, back in Vigil’s Keep. And although she’s not really around anymore, better safe than sorry, right? ) After all, she’d feel obliged to help around more what with her sister leaving, although Healer Marek sometimes ribs his daughter of being around more than she used to - To which she huffs and jabs back at her father about how many of his friend’s daughters actually spent this much time around their father willingly - And the Healer would laugh uproariously and be silent on the matter, safe for a mischievous, knowing glint on his blue eyes to both of them.

So he continues to see her everyday, taking lunches together, sometimes resurfacing the combo they did the first day they met on kids who needs the necessary distraction (I heal, you dazzle. See, I told you we make a good team! ) And then he would wink at her, if only to see that lovely pink tinge that never failed to take over her face every time.

And each time, the feeling would surface. A phantom, telltale sign of pain just slightly below his left shoulder blade that would slowly build to a steady throb the longer he was with her. He tried, discreetly, to check it with Healer Marek (Who proclaimed him healthy as a Mabari), then performing all kinds of tests on himself, hounded by a slight panic that the result of all those mad romps together with Selena and Justin and the crazy Grey Wardens of Amaranthine has finally taken a terrible toll (With his luck, he’d probably turn into a Childer or something) But in a small corner of his mind, he knew with a strange certainty that that wasn’t it. There’s something bigger. Something that’s just slightly missing and if he could just _remember_ …

Yet every time the throbbing ghost pain becomes almost unbearable, Marian’s eyes would meet his, and she would smile. And he finds that he doesn’t really mind the pain, after all. Not so much. 

 

******************************

 

There is a strange bundle of feelings that won’t quite go away, every time he heals her.

And Maker knows he does that a lot. Marian was used to walking around with various scrapes and bruises around her person, acquired in her various romping about around Lothering – falling down trees, remainders from little scuffles with bandits that still favored the roads around Lothering or brawls that always somehow manage to shape up whenever she and Varrek is in the tavern together. However careful she tried to be (Which, as Da says, was as careful as a rampaging Bronto) her arms and legs always ends up looking little better than the scratching posts that Lisbeth’s cat favored. Even Da had given up trying to check her for little scrapes everyday (It’s just gonna be there again tomorrow, eh, sweetling?)

He was different though. At the end of the day, as they clear the tables and check up on the patients one last time before locking up the Clinic, his eyes would squint just so as it travels up and down her figure (Something that definitely does not make her want to blush or anything), before he would say -

“Let me have a look at that”

He would then engage in some tsk-tsk-ing, inspecting a scabbed knee or a scratched arm with a suspiciously deliberate air of sadness, before he’d look up to her half scowling, half mortified expression, and finally lay his fingers over the offending wound. 

When he heals her, there is something in his eyes, in how the amber flickers ever so slightly with a soft blue, much like the faint light around his fingers as he heals. Even how many times she tried to replicate that color, idly shooting flickers of light to the air when no one is looking, she could never get that shade of blue just right. _His_ shade of blue.

“There, all better” He smiles, patting the unbroken patch of skin as the blue glow fades away into nothingness. And for a moment, there is a flicker of something on the edge of her mind. Of gentle hands and faint blue light, a reassuring voice by her ear.

 _“There, all better now Hawke”_

“Thank you” She says, slowly. As she tries to hold on to the fleeting memory, to remember, just a little bit more. 

“Hey, no problem at all” Then he pauses, eyeing her critically “But…I have a name, you know. It would make your gratitude much more heartfelt if you can just saaaaay it” He winks, and Marian fought to stop the rising heat creeping up her neck and produce a witty reply instead. Like how it was definitely not his name anyway, or how teasing her reluctance in calling him by his name is one big injustice given he always called her ‘Sweetheart’ and all manner of ridiculous things.  
“Thank you, Anders” She grits out, feeling a scowl already forming at his smug expression – Which slowly morphs into a concerned frown as his eyes squints in the general direction of her face. 

“Oh, missed that spot! Really, perhaps you should just start wearing armor everywhere or something”

She tries not to shiver as his hand cups the side of her face gently, the calloused tips of his fingers brushing hesitantly before settling against an errant scratch on her cheek

And yes, she does wonders sometimes, why it was so difficult for her to just say his name (Although she is still sure that it’s not actually his name) Like there was something more to it, a clinging shadow of unremembered things that went with the syllables. 

Out of the corner of her eyes, she could see the blue light of his magic, and the bundle of feelings – Equal measures of happiness, and an overwhelming sense of sadness, washes over her again and won’t quite go away.

And she wonders.

 

******************************

 

“Have you ever thought..” 

He had asked one day, lying on the grass outside of the Chantry waiting for Basil to finish his Mass and join them for an afternoon picking herbs. “That once, this kind of life is not possible for people like us?”

She turns her head towards him, her mind slightly drowsy from the late summer breeze and gentle sunlight peeking between the canopy of leaves above them. 

“Because we would have been locked up in some cold, dingy tower our whole lives. Never seeing the world… “

She frowns then, a little - Because every time Varrek went into one of his stories of the Circle Uprising over their weekly ale, Anders would get into this semi-maudlin mood and start talking about things - Serious things. Which, if she was to be honest, nudged a tad too close to something inside – Something raw and tender and strangely painful - for her to be entirely comfortable about. Freedom, oppression, justice, and injustices of things that have passed so long ago.

Maybe she just didn’t get the whole point. They’re here now, they’re happy and free – and although what happened with the mages before and during the Dragon Age was unspeakably sad, they got through it, didn’t they? They get to rebuild and live this life and the world gets to avoid the mistakes it had done. She wants to tell him this, sometimes. 

“At least I would have been locked up with you, huh?” She murmurs instead, coaxing a smile into her own lips.

“Yeah. But still…” 

And because Anders’s tone was just slightly a bit too sad for her liking, and Basil is most probably stuck making moon eyes at Sister Elthina and won’t be out for another hour or so anyway, she turns herself fully to her side – catching his eyes with a playful smile. 

“You know, that doesn’t sound quite right, actually”

“Hmmm?”

“Sod the Tower - You would have escaped, of course. By any means possible. They’ll have an amazingly rotten time trying to catch you”

“And even if they do, you’ll just escape again. And again. Anders, Apostate extraordinaire, breaking out from circles and charming virgins and kittens everywhere!” Somehow, she could just picture him wearing something with those silly feathers too - Strutting around, being dashing and breaking hearts all over Thedas. 

“I would probably be pretty boring, in comparison. Probably holed up in some Tower while taking up embroidery”

Anders snorts incredulously, but his eyes were once again bright with mirth and warmth – chasing away the shadows that previously resided there. Marian couldn’t help the silly grin that started spreading on her lips, or the undignified squeal that escaped them as suddenly he reaches out a hand to ruffle her hair.

“I’m sure you would have gave them a run for their sovereigns too, Sweetheart”

 

******************************

 

Sometimes, he does imagine how she would have been in those troubling times. 

Even in the relative peace surrounding them now, she has a penchant for finding trouble - sticking that adorable rounded nose everywhere people are afraid to. Deranged revivalists of the Templar Order, highwaymen, the last vestiges of the nation’s slaver ring that never seems to die already. All those and more, she seemed to find everywhere, and somewhat takes it as a strange responsibility to make right. It was not a rare occurrence for her to disappear for a few days, only to return with a big grin and a host of cuts and bruises - Sometimes dragging along unconscious men and women of ill repute along as if they were sacks of potatoes. It always left his heart with a sort of helpless ache, each time she ran off like that. The thought of him not being there for her if something bad were to happen. 

The day that she opened the Clinic door, almost sheepishly, to reveal a knife stuck on her arm, was the day that he decided to just simply follow her around to avoid any further strain to his heart. And then it was no time at all before his everyday life was jostling with strange misadventures and people, getting acquainted with the various people that seemed to do just that - Follow her around.

There was Varrek ; Loud, boisterous, but ultimately kind hearted - With his outrageous tales and never ending patience for unpaid bar tabs (His family owns the only tavern in Lothering – and thus, he couldn’t have made friends with a worse lot than them) Meri, who is by turns extremely wise and extremely confused, but nevertheless did worlds of good teaching the town’s elven children at weekends. Then the twins - Evalina and Sofia, who could practically pass for two complete strangers to people who didn’t know them to be related. While redheaded Eva is prim, proper, and rising in the ranks of the Seekers, Sofia writes ‘adult fiction’ for a living and is herself the epitome of inappropriateness. There have nary been a day that the two sisters would stop bickering, but Anders knew with a definite certainty that there has never been two sisters who loved each other more.

And then there’s Leto, who despite being all broody and constantly buried under his books, somehow always managed to supply them with good booze. And Basil, who sometimes took part in their romps, whenever his duties in the Chantry allows him - Or whenever Sister Elthina is indisposed of and he can’t ogle at her, as Sofia would cheerfully put it. (But he digresses, rakish and flippant as he could be, Basil did a lot of good in the Chantry, and their joint efforts to combine his healing magic with Basil’s medical training is showing considerable potential) 

People gather around her, as if to a beacon. And in some ways he understands, a little part of him falling easily into that place as if he has been there all along, beside her.

He wonders, though. Of how he fits in into all this. Sure, he’s the designated healer – Something he has accepted with wary resignation over the days healing countless cuts and bruises and ailments (and the occasional ‘ailments’ too, when Sofia is concerned) Forget that. He only wonders of her. How he fits into the irregular shape that is her life.

“One of these days, you’re going to have a really nasty one – and then you’ll finally have to think twice before jumping into a spider-infested cave with such happy abandon” He said, barely suppressing a very Eva-like tut-tutting. Before him, Marian sat almost meekly in the clinic’s table. Another long day, and another wound for him to heal. 

“I’m actually being serious here, sweetling” 

“But you can heal anything” 

His eyes narrows. Sometimes he wonders, not with a little dread, how she would have fared if the age they live in were darker, more dangerous. How does someone as trusting, as infinitely kind as her could hope to even survive? 

“You know that’s not true” He said quietly, looking up at her blue eyes. For a moment, neither of them moved – She with her eyes wide and feet dangling off the table, his arms braced on either side of her slender frame. 

“But you’ll be there” She smiles, as if it explains everything. And somehow it does, and Anders could only sigh and place his hand on hers - hoping she does not feel it tremble. 

He still wonders. But in a way, it is all right, like she said. In those troubling times, he imagined that he would have been there with her – Healing her, giving her a place to lean on. Until the very end. 

 

******************************

 

He could not deny that meeting Marian had awakened something inside of him, starting with the memory of her name before blooming into a series of small, phantom memories that came and went as surely as the pain on the small of his back. Soon, he found that he…remembers many things. Mostly, it was mere flashes and brushes of feelings. Snippets of conversations, shadows of face remembered and strange, complicated weaves of healing magic that he didn’t remember ever learning. The scent of Lilacs that he knew was hers even before she met her.

Then one night, after all of them had too much to drink and Varrek had spun one too many tales of the Circle Uprising, he remembers dying.

He remembers the clawing panic, the cold, the sharp flagstones digging into the side of his face. He remembers many things. The sharp, searing pain on his back that dulled into a creeping emptiness, and then, the strangest sense of relief that blanketed him in impossible warmth. Of getting peace. Of setting a friend free.

But what he remembers most was a voice

_“I…”_

He blinks at the voice – So fresh and yet so old – buried away inside the hazy layers of borrowed memories as the world around him starts to unravel. The world blurs at the seams, between the gentle morning sunlight filtering through his window and the angry red skies of what is supposed to be his dream, and for a moment it seemed like he was neither here nor there. He is watching himself on the bed, and another him – was it him? – lying on that cold, sharp flagstone ground, blood seeping like a river between the ridges of the stones. Anders held on to the frayed edges of his unconsciousness, because the voice was still there, still waiting, hoping for him to hear. 

_“I’m sorry"_

And then gentler still, almost lost in the harsh wind and the roaring sounds of things to come, barely stirring the air near his rapidly closing eyelids.

_“I love you”_

His eyes shot open a second time, breath ragged and hands trembling as he sat up and held his head between them, the words lingering faintly to echo inside him.

This was important, somehow. 

 

******************************

 

Only a few rooms away, limbs tangled on the sheets of a bed meant for two, Marian remembers how it feels to kill someone.

_“The world needs to see this. Then we can stop pretending that the circles are a solution”_

She remembers looking down at a feathered shoulder, the feathers black and dim, remembers a hysterical realization that they used to be grey – warm like his smiles had been. 

_“I am glad that it was you. It was good to be happy, for a while”_

She remembers the cold steel of her dagger, the practiced ease by which she buried it to the hilt in the man’s back. She remembers the sky above them, red and turbulent, the screams around her and the flaming beacon on the distance. Remembers thinking that the world is ending, and as the dagger slips from her numb hands, that she couldn’t care less. 

Marian woke up to find tears streaking her face, a choked sob half-formed on her lips. For a moment, it was all she could do to hold onto her trembling hands – trying to banish the lingering feel of cold steel against her palms.

She’s had these…memories before. Glimpses, mostly, inane snippets of conversations or feelings, the brush of familiar feathers beneath her fingers, but this – this was something else. Marian ran her hands roughly over her face, trying to remember the finer details of her nightmare. This was important, somehow, this dream – More so than the other things she’s been experiencing, and if she could just pinpoint something, anything more beyond the brief tableau it had presented her…

_“…Then we can stop pretending that the circles are a solution”_

She remembers Varrek’s tale the previous night, then the angry red skies of her dream – the sparks of flames raining down all around them. In a way, the destruction of the Chantry was a wakeup call, bloody as it was, Varrek had said. It brought to light how the Circles were skewed from the start, and gave the mages a final push to finally break free from a broken system.

_“The world needs to see this…”_

Something clicks inside her, a wild guess that gained momentum as she snatched her red cloak and ran all the way towards Leto’s old mansion on the edge of town. Try as he might to stock the Chantry’s own library, Basil could never hope to accumulate as many, or as diverse a collection as the one that Leto had built for himself – the books hoarded from shady traders from Tevinter after the Empire’s fall.

She scoured her friend’s labyrinth of shelves for anything relating to the Circle Uprisings and the events surrounding it. Slouched as he always is on his ancient velvet armchair, Leto’s only reaction to her newfound interest was a slight raising of his eyebrows as she spread out the books around her on the hardwood floors. 

“Which part of the Circle Uprising are you interested in, exactly?”

Marian’s head snaps up from the passage she was feverishly trying to comb, finding Leto standing over her with a quizzical look, probably finally taking pity on her haphazard method of research. 

“The – The person who started it, actually. It’s weird, I can’t seem to find anything about him anywhere”. And it was really strange, to think about it. So much books written about the uprising – the events leading to it and its impact, the subsequent Mage-Templar war to the absolving of the Circles, and yet…

Leto hummed for a moment before he strode to one of the shelves behind them. Long, elegant fingers danced around the volumes before he picked out two slim, leather-bound volumes from the very edge of the shelf, kneeling beside her. 

“I have read extensively about the subject myself and asked the same thing – These were the only thing I found that could probably help” Leto thumbed through the volume before passing a marked page to her – the book’s print old and slightly faded, seemingly done with a less sophisticated technique than the rest of the book she’s perused through so far.

_The instigator of the Chantry’s destruction was an unidentified mage, unregistered within the Kirkwall Circle, but theorized to be a significant contributor to the Mage Underground movement at the time. After the end of the Mage-Templar War, one of the first decree by Divine Victoria I was to issue a pardon for the instigator, absolving him in the eyes of the reformed Chantry. And yet, little else is known of the mage that had started the mage revolution in Thedas aside from the report that he was executed right after the incident in the Kirkwall Chantry – believed by some to be done by the Champion herself. A strongly held theory is that the Viscount of Kirkwall, formerly the Champion, had a large role in his pardon post the Mage-Templar wars, as many records had shown them to be close associates before the Uprising. And if the rumors were to be believed -_

Marian’s chest suddenly felt too, too small, remembering the sad, resigned tilt of the shoulders before her. The lingering fondness in his last admission. 

_”..It was good to be happy, for a while”_

“And then this” Leto replaced the book on her numb fingers with another one. “It’s not much, but I personally believe that there had been a purge of information, of some sort , like someone was determined to keep the man that he was obscured from scrutiny” 

_It was inisuated strongly that the mage in question had been associated with the Grey Wardens of Ferelden, as records in Vigil’s Keep dating back to before the Uprising had shown. However, further investgation into the records of the Wardens implied that the mage himself did not hail from Ferelden, but from the Anderfells._

From the Anderfells.

Anderfells.

_Anders._

 

******************************

 

“I’ve always wondered why Father named me Marian”

A full week of trying to avoid the Clinic – to avoid _him_ , ended up with her sitting on the corner table of Varrek’s tavern, nursing a pint of ale she didn’t really want as Varrek tackled the ever-present stack of papers he always seems to have around him.

“Well, after the Champion of Kirkwall, was it not? Bit flashy, but it is a pretty name ” Varrek raised an eyebrow, not looking up from the paper he is glaring at. “And you know, as far as name aspirations go – the Champion’s a damn good act to follow, championing freedom and protecting the weak and all that“

“Is she, now?”

The scritch-scritching of Varrek’s pen stopped, a moment before he peered into her own downcast gaze. 

“What’s this about then, Mari? Does this have anything to do with why you’ve been avoiding Anders these past few days?”

Marian kept her gaze stubbornly on her mug of ale, and before long Varrek had put down his papers altogether and scooted his chair closer to hers, deciding to go along with her train of thought.

“The way I see it, I know she ain’t exactly spotless, but I do think she did what had to be done, with the kind of messed up lot she was handed”

“Even if it means killing someone she loved?” She knows there is an edge of hysteria laced in her tone, and Varrek must have seen it too. But he was not her best friend for nothing, Varrek never asked, never pried, only waited for her stories to unfold before his eyes, and there is a sudden gentleness in Varrek’s eyes as he reached out and laid his hand atop her fluttering ones.

“Yes” He saw her mouth fly open and sushed her with a gentle squeeze on her hand. “It probably did”

“Those were entirely different times, Mari. Those days, people will strip you of your _mind_ if you’re a mage and so much as looked a bit funny in the eyes” Varrek sighed “Now I don’t know what’s all this is actually about, but I do know that you were named after a very brave woman – and you are, too, a very brave woman. And I think, were you in her position, you would have done what had to be done”

“Do you think…Do you think he would have forgiven him, though?” Marian asked in a small voice, and it was a testament of Varrek’s affinity for stories and the unwavering gentleness of his friendship for her, that Varrek stopped to consider her question for longer than she thought necessary for such an idle fancy.

“She loved him, didn’t she?”

Marian nodded slowly. 

“Then it would be safe to assume that he loved her too, right? And you know what, Mari – If he really did love her, then he would have understood, too. He would have forgiven her _anything_ ”

 

******************************

He found her behind the Clinic, something drawing him to slip through the creaky back door as the buzz of activity in the building slowly died down. The moonlight was enough to make out her small figure, still amidst the sea of long grass swaying behind her. She gave a slight start when their eyes met across the darkness – and for a moment he was afraid that she would flee, as she did the past week. 

And yet she stayed, even as he settled himself beside her on the grass – his palms suddenly damp with the realization of how much he missed her, despite the phantom ache on his back, despite the flashes of too-familiar strands of dark hair amongst the scent of blood, despite everything. 

“Hey” he said by way of greeting, not knowing what else to say.

“Hey” She offered back, and Anders had to quell the rustling in his mind, the other voices that sounded so much like her, or was it her – He didn’t really know anymore.

“Can’t sleep?”

She nods, slowly, before turning fully to face him and looking him straight in the eyes – Her own eyes filled with determination and bluer than anything. 

“Anders, I know this is going to sound really really strange – But I’ve had these - ” Marian faltered, but in the absence of her words her eyes spoke everything, and suddenly, suddenly he knew that it wasn’t just him. Whatever was haunting him was haunting her too, and perhaps…

“Dreams?”

Marian’s eyes snapped back up to hold his gaze, relief and realization flooding the blue orbs as she nods again. Slowly, Anders enveloped her hand in his, a silent encouragement for her to continue. 

“And, I don’t know how much sense this would make, but I…I have to tell you – because, because she couldn’t” He could feel her hands tighten into fists beneath his “That she’s sorry, that she’s so very sorry”

“For this” her hand slid onto her back – fingers cupping the exact place of his phantom pain, and that spot to seemed to flare to life. He peered down, his heart hammering even as his whole being fell into a strange calm, like he was everywhere and nowhere at once. Her hand was warm now in his back, and he sought her other hand, wrapping it in his and coaxing her to go on, just a little bit more.

“And she, she loved you, him. I..I love you”

“I know” I know. _He knows_. 

“He has always known” he said, slowly. And it doesn’t make sense and yet it does, and it feels right to not stop, their hands tangled in each other’s as their memories too merges and tangles. 

“If there was anything he regretted, it was…this” He sweeps his hands uselessly at their surroundings, at everything “Not having…all that we have right now, not being to do things the way we can right now” 

“But now we do, don’t we?” As Marian looked up towards him, he was reminded again of their first meeting – of both their first meeting. Her eyes so blue, and her magic – flaring to life in front of him as the mana in his own veins sang towards it and he is so _thankful_. 

They fell unto the grass silently, hands gentle and unhurried, breath and strands of hair whispering against skin. The air around them hummed softly, magic laced in the earth below singing in tune with the flow in their own veins.

There were no desperate declarations of love, no urgency or the hanging crackle of revolutions and storms to come. Just two mages, falling in love, and the world spread open before them infinitely.

 

_“Ten years, a hundred years from now, someone like me will love someone like you, and there will be no Templars to tear them apart”_


End file.
